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Chess Telecom officially joined HRH Prince of Wales’ May Day Network 2009 by making four powerful pledges to help the environment.
Chess has many green achievements under its belt, including being featured in HRH Prince Charles’ May Day speech in 2008, and to mark May Day 2009 Chess has successfully launched its new Carbon Offsetting service to all customers. To kick start the launch of the new service, Chess offset 61 tonnes of CO2. This supports the pledges made at the May Day Summit by Chess’ Chief Executive David Pollock and HR Director & Head of Chess Green Team, Anne Binnie:
• To measure and report its carbon publicly
• To manage its carbon emissions
• To work in partnership with suppliers to reduce carbon emissions
• To encourage customers to take action of reducing their carbon
“Being part of the May Day Network is extremely important to Chess,” said Chief Executive David Pollock. “For a small Alderley Edge based company, being mentioned by HRH Prince of Wales in his global broadcast, at last year’s May Day Summit was fantastic. The launch of our Carbon Offset Service is an important step towards our commitment. Anyone can use our web portal to calculator and offset their footprint. What’s more if you’re a Chess customer we pay 25% of your first years offset.”
Whilst the pledges were being made, back at the office Chess people took part in a number of events to promote the environmental message of the day. In fact, for many Chess people their efforts started before they even got to work. With the reward of a bacon sandwich beckoning, many found environmentally friendly alternatives of embarking on their daily commute; such as taking advantage of the bike to work scheme, walking or car sharing.
Once fed and watered, Chess people were encouraged to submit ideas to the Green Team of how Chess could add to its green credentials. The winning idea of using the local car garage to perform a ‘health check’ of peoples cars was awarded a ‘green goodie bag’. This included a cotton shopping bag, energy saving light bulbs, organic coffee and chocolate as well as some items from the local fair trade shop.
Since last year’s May Day, The Green Team have been the driving force for the implementation of the pledges made in 2008, encouraging all Chess people to get involved and play their part in helping the environment. In the last year alone, Chess has managed to increase recycling amounts by 35% with over 3 tonnes of paper, cans and cardboard, resulting in a reduction of waste to landfill by 50%. Plus, with the introduction of an e-billing system for customers, Chess now save 3 tonnes of paper each year, as well as successfully maintaining the ISO 14001 environmental standard for a second year running.
“I am very proud of the Chess Green Team achievements and the positive impact we have made” said Head of the Green Team, Anne. “The successful launch of our Carbon Offsetting Service was perfectly timed to help celebrate this year’s Summit. It is a great service to be able to provide Chess customers especially as it gives them the option to choose how they spend their carbon offset on either energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, fuel switch projects or wind turbine projects.”
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